


Sealskin

by meanderingsoul



Category: Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Identity Issues, M/M, Pocket Watches, Secrets, Worry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-05
Updated: 2017-02-05
Packaged: 2018-09-22 07:23:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9591611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanderingsoul/pseuds/meanderingsoul
Summary: Gene Hunt only ever committed one meditated-upon crime in his entire life.Once, he stole a pocket watch.





	

  


Gene hunt only ever committed one meditated-upon crime in his entire life.

Once, he stole a pocket watch.

He’d already waited on Sam to finish his sorry excuse for brekkie. Yogurt should not be considered a meal all on its own, nothing hearty to that slop. Now he was waiting for the prissy little sod to finish shaving and pretending he had any hair that needed tending to. They weren’t actually in that much of a hurry. Gene had barged in early more for the fun of it, startled Sam out of a sound sleep and given himself time to snoop about a bit.

But Tyler only had the one photo around, a cute enough one from back when he’d been a PC with some lad thrilled to try on his helmet, no awkward love letters or girlie mags, no hidden items to prove he was as much a little perv as he seemed, not even a cookery book that Gene could make fun of him for. Snooping through Tyler’s things wasn’t turning out to be very rewarding.

His shoe caught on a little length of chain, half under the crap little telly that never seemed to work properly.

When he pulled it out it was a watch, a nice one, though the engraving on the front was strange, the gold oddly hard and pitted. It gave him the creeps to stare at it, all loops and nonsensical whorls.

“What’s that?” Sam said, buttoning his shirt by the door.

Gene held the watch up to the dim light, still peering at the markings in front of his face. “Pocket watch. Isn’t it yours?”

Sam shrugged, pulling his boots on. “Don’t recognize it. Someone must have left it here.”

“You sure? Seems like something that would be missed. Can't have come cheap.”

“Well it in’t mine. Aren’t we in a hurry Guv? Unless you were just taking the piss. God, you were, weren’t you. You know, I...”

Gene tucked the watch into his inner coat pocket as soon as Sam turned and couldn’t see him do it.

He stared at it again that night, in the quiet of his house in the lamplight. The lamp was flickering and fizzing a bit next to him, but nothing else in the house was acting up. There hadn’t been a brownout all week.

He traced the strange markings with one blunt fingertip. Something about the watch was strange, was other. It weren’t right. It didn’t seem like something that should be near Sam. It didn't seem like something that was his.

He’d known somehow when he’d first taken it that he wasn’t going to give it back.

Gene dug an old lockbox out of a closet, emptied it and tucked the watch away inside, hid the box and tucked the key away behind his warrant card.

Decision made, he went up to bed. Though it took him some time to fall asleep.

Sam settled down not much longer after that. No more screaming nightmares when Gene kipped at his place after they’d had a late night out. No pitching fits about events that hadn’t happened yet. His moods got more predictable, still had a bastard temper, but it seemed to line up with immediate events more than something only he could hear.

And Gene left the watch in his lockbox, kept it hidden for years.

Left it hidden away when things shifted for them, when Sam’s intermittent friendship turned to honest and welcomed affection, when he moved out of his shithole of a flat and allegedly into Gene’s empty downstairs rooms, left it hidden over years of cases, when that last break in his leg had never quite healed right, when they took the promotions they’d put off for so long, when they’d finally grown old.

Left it hidden even when Sam had been right about the names of the next few prime ministers, the titles of movies that hadn’t existed in 1973 when they’d met, when mobile phones were the hot new thing and police stations were filling up with pc terminals. Though Sam never mentioned that stuff anymore.

Sometimes Gene worried he’d done something terrible that day, that there was more to the watch, to Tyler than he’d ever been able to understand.

He could never bring himself to regret the theft.

But when Gene knew he only had days left to him, when his clock had run down and they were finished, he pressed an old, tiny key into Sam’s warm hand and told him where the box was, told him to open it once Gene was dead and gone.

Gene knew somehow that it was for the best he didn’t live to see what happened when his Sam finally got the watch back.

  


**Author's Note:**

> I feel like maybe everyone in the fandom gave some version of this AU a try back in the day, but here's my take on it ten years later because it was just so fun. And I'm really not sure if anyone ever did this particular take on the pocket watch issue. I hope this leaves you with that creepy feeling, even though Sam and Gene got to spend their lives together.


End file.
